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Otway Town F.C.
| dissolved = | ground = Digicel Trinity Park | capacity = 14,250 | owner = Stanford Collins | chairman = | manager = Al Meacham | coach = | currentleague = League B | currentposition = | lastseason = | lastleague = League B | lastposition = 5th | current = | website = | firstgame = | largestwin = | worstdefeat = | topscorer = | fansgroup = | honours = | American = }} Otway Town Football Club is a professional football club based in Otway, St. Gregory. The team plays in League B, the second professional tier of the St. Gregory Football Association. The club joined the SGFA in 1992 with the backing of American shipping magnate Stanford Collins, entering play in League C. They have spent much of their history as a yo-yo club, drifting between the top two divisions of Gregorian football, and have rivalries with several nearby clubs including Union Town, Little Rouge and Fort Verdigris. The team came closest to major success when they reached the 2007 SGFA Cup Final, but were defeated by Zane Hills. The team plays its home games at the 14,250-seat Digicel Trinity Park in Otway. History In 1990, Stanford Collins, a businessman from Peoria, Illinois, purchased a stake in Western Hydro, the company then responsible for the operations of the Otway Canal. He would spend months at a time in the town that gave the canal its name, and before long had begun to investigate other business ventures. The popularity of football across St. Gregory piqued Collins' interest in starting a professional club of his own, and by the fall of 1991 he had launched a publicity campaign to generate support for a club that he intended to enter in the 1992-93 League C season, due to begin a year later. Collins intended to name his team the Otway Pilots, after the riverboats which form the backbone of the area's economy, but under the advisement of his staff, he gave the team the more traditional-sounding name Otway Town Football Club. The SGFA approved the club's application for acceptance as a member of the professional leagues and declared on January 22, 1992 that Otway Town would compete in League C beginning that fall. Collins and his staff immediately set about recruiting players and coaches. David Stith was named the club's first manager and Nigel Melrose, a Lancashire-born midfielder who had had stints with FC Chapman and Clifftown Crusaders, was named the first captain. Despite the hoopla, the 1992-93 season held little expectations for the upstart club – one of four expansion teams in League C that season – however they claimed a notable victory over eventual league champions Bay View in just their second match. Town went on to finish a respectable 6th out of 8 teams in League C, second best of the expansion clubs behind Eventide, who finished 5th. They also defeated Fort Verdigris at home in the first round of the 1992-93 SGFA Cup before going down to League B side Swifton Athletic in the second round. Colors, crest and nickname The club's official colors are blue and gold. At their inception in 1992, they played in blue shirts with red and gold trim, the same colors of founder Stanford Collins' favorite hockey team, the St. Louis Blues. When the Blues dropped red as a trim color in the summer of 1998, so too did Otway Town. The team is nicknamed the Jaguars. When establishing the club, Collins originally wanted to call them the Pilots, but was convinced by his mostly British staff to pick a less American sounding name. One legend which has neither been confirmed nor denied by Collins is he picked the nickname Jaguars after seeing a Jaguar car driving past his house in Greenley and deciding it was the most English nickname he could come up with. The club is often simply referred to as Town by fans and commentators, despite potential confusion with longtime nearby rivals Union Town. 'Kits' Otway Town's uniforms are currently supplied by adidas. The shirt sponsor is Digicel, who also hold naming rights to the team's home ground. Players 'Current squad' : As of January 23, 2017 Note: Players without a flag are from St. Gregory. Players with an asterisk (*) are from outside the United States or its territories, or have represented a non-U.S. territory at international level, but hold either citizenship or permanent residency in the U.S. and thus do not count towards the league cap on foreign players. Out on loan Former players :Further information: Category:Otway Town F.C. players Category:Otway Town F.C. Category:Club pages